|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Ironically, NIC's biggest critics come from the same information systems world. Criticism has been directed against NIC's standardized language ambitions. Susan Grobe, a nurse and information scientist at the University of Texas, Houston, criticizes the attempts at creating a universal standardized system as scientifically outmoded and inflexible. Instead Grobe proposes her own nursing intervention system, the Nursing Intervention Lexicon and Taxonomy (NILT) which consists of eight broad categories of nursing interventions. According to Grobe, in NILT "the burden of standardized language is resident in the automated systems and not dictated to practicing professionals for their memorization and adoption" (Grobe 1992, 94). Where NIC expects nurses to learn and use a standardized terminology, Grobe believes that nurses should keep their natural language and computers should be used to standardize language. She argues that having computers decide how terms will be standardized is inevitable and cites researchers who are working on this approach in health care documentation. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
NIC researchers defend themselves against Grobe's criticism by specifying how a standardized language increases comparability. They note that although the advent of computers was an impetus for standardized languages, different organizations and agencies developed their own system, "with the result that we cannot collect comparable data from multiple agencies, or even within agencies from one unit to the next." They further quote Sherrer, Côté, and Mandil. "Intelligent documentation systems cannot totally discard classifications. Moreover, the availability of at least one classification is a necessary condition for a good documentation system. Classifications are not a necessary evil but a very effective way of representing knowledge about the domain of discourse" (McCloskey and Bulechek 1994a, 59; see also Bulechek and McCloskey 1993). Thus since a natural language system is at this moment lacking in nursing, the NIC researchers claim that their classification system fills the void and at the same time achieves the goal of comparability. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
In their newsletter, the NIC investigators summarize their vision about a standardized language to achieve comparability across sites and professions. "Norma Lang has often been quoted as saying, 'If we cannot name it, we cannot control it, finance it, teach it, research it, or put it into public policy. . . .' We would like to be quoted as saying, 'Now that we have named it, we can control it, finance it, teach it, research it, and put it into public policy'" (NIC newsletter 1994, 2). |
|
|
|
|
|